Chapter 7. Package Management using the Graphical User Interface
- Table of Contents
- 7.1. General Page Layout and Header Frame
- 7.2. Package Description Files
- 7.3. Building and Shipping Packages
- 7.4. General Package Commands
- 7.5. General Version Control Commands
- 7.6. Version Control Status Commands
- 7.7. Version Control Actions: Checkin, Checkout, etc.
Navigational location:
[login]--->[start]---> [PACKAGE MANAGEMENT]-\ /-->[program execution] | | | |----> [project management]-+->+-->[file view] | | | |----> [pool management]----/ \-->[directory browser] | |----> [configuration] | \----> [help] package context needed
7.1. General Page Layout and Header Frame
The ComPact GUI package management page assembles all commands and actions associated with software packages around a central view of the selected package in the file system, which is displayed in the dir1 (5), dir2 (6), dir3 (7) frames. The left dir frame lists all packages with the selected one at the top, while the middle and right frame are used as a simple file browser.
You can select any of the files displayed in the directory frames by clicking on the selection box, and deselect it by clicking again. Furthermore, there are three small special buttons located in the top right corner of the dir frames to add all files to the selection, invert the selection, and deselect all files, respectively. The fourth small button in the dir2 (6) and dir3 (7) frames can be used to flush the internally cached version control information about the package elements and update the display with actual information. The rightmost small button can be used to open a new window with the ComPact filebrowser page for the currently displayed directory. This is mainly just a bigger and enhanced version of the dir2/3 pages.
You may view any file by simply clicking on its name. ComPact will popup a window with the File Content Page used to list text files.
Several commands from the header command frame (4) make use of the set of selected files from the dir2/3 frames. These are notably the edit and delete command. Some selected commands from the command menus at the bottom of the page also work on selected files, if any are present, like the diff and annotate commands.
Figure 7-3 shows the complete header command frame. You will notice three sections of commands:
| File and directory operations |
| Checkout or create packages |
| Checkout or create collections |
The Edit button is used to invoke an editor for the file named in the text input field on its right, or if this is empty, for all selected files. What editor is called is defined by the httpd-editor configuration variable of ComPact, which may be specified in the .compactrc file.
The Create button is used to create a new file and directory, as selected by the radio button on the right. You must of course specify a not-yet-existing file name for this operation to succeed. Please note that the newly created file or directory does only exist in your local workspace and is not put under version control by this operation. To do so, you must use the Add or Create & Add operations of the version control general command group at the bottom of the page.
The Delete button can be used to delete one or more files, prefering the value from the text input field, and defaulting to all selected files. Again, this will only remove the files from your workspace and not from the package, which can only be done by use of the Remove operation of the version control general command group at the bottom of the page.
The commands to checkout packages, create packages, checkout collections and create collections are exactly the same as in the start page described in Section 6.2.
Figure 7-4 shows the command menus available in the package management page. In the following sections we will have a look at each command group in turn.
